Owned a74 gt....loved it.....they probably used death valley because it was the only place dry enough to keep the front fenders from rusting off the car during the test!!!!😂
I had a '74 GT hatchback. Bought it used in 1978 from my brother that had previously planned to put a Chevy V8 engine in it. The steering and handling was marvelous. The ride was firm but comfortable. The interior well laid-out. No issues with the bucket seats. Radio AM/FM worked well. But the body corrosion; the engine excessively burning oil; and the clutch going bad at 66K miles, the car was junk by 1980.
@@bloqk16 You were one of the lucky few. My sister bought a 74 in 76 and it didn’t even last more than a year after she got it. Don’t think these were ever meant to last beyond the 1970’s! Sad because I thought they were pretty decent/looking(esp. the GT) compared to some of the choices available for the day.
That was the big thing the Detroit auto makers did back in the 1950s through the '70s: The long-distance durability run. The major flaw was that those vehicles were operated at constant highway speeds; which is a gentler mode than the realities of: Continuous strings of stops-and-starts; excessive idling; hard-acceleration; and high-revving the engines. Put those cars through the paces of city traffic, such as in San Francisco or New York City, and lets see what the durability results would be after 100K miles.
By 1976, the engine was much improved but the buying public was not convinced. It's insane that it took them all of those years to correct problems that never should have been there in the first place.
I once had a Vega, sold to me for $1.00, when I was young and broke. The fuel filter clogged regularly, because the gas tank was full of crap, and it burned oil like crazy. I didn’t have it for long lol. After I spewed oil fumes and smoke plumes, for miles, all over the car behind me, the driver screamed “GET THAT PIECE OF ISH OFF THE ROAD!!!”. I then drove it home and never again touched it. 😂
Well, one aspect that looked legit with this film: The accumulation of crud on the sides of the Vegas. My comment is in light of an earlier promotional film of the Chevy Corvairs, driving into Central and South America, that always showed those vehicles looking remarkably clean being driven on dirt roads.
Im no GMC fan especially what I consider newer - mid 80s, but Ive had a 67 C20 that was awesome, a 65 Corvair and I liked both those products. I kinda always liked the Vega I wish the cars would go back to this simplicity Ive been wrenching on cars and motorcycles since like 1970 im 62 and still wrenching on old junk. thanks Periscope films for sharing these treasures!
1972 graduated from high school, bought a new Vega. Engine burn up, twice. G M repl aced both engines. My brother bought a 1971 Vega, he put a Cosworth head on his Vega engine, raced it, did well. His engine never burned up.😮
My parents Vega couldn’t even withstand the suburbs of Long Island, New York. It’s amazing how shitty the cars were back then, and how reliable they are now.
I had one of these cars back at that time. It burned oil and leaked oil. It had an aluminum engine. I changed the spark plugs and in the process, scratched the burnt oil off a small area on the engine block. I could see what the block was made of: A label pressed into the engine block read: "Budweiser".
I left Arizona in my Chevy Vega estate 2 door station wagon with 31k on the odometer and made it to Northern Illinois before the motor siezed up on it. BIG P.O.S. 💩
Pretty impressive. August and September Death Valley temperatures are hotter than most experience anywhere else in North America. Lots of road trips to Death Valley and it's not uncommon to see an overheated car at some point. As others have pointed out though, heat aside the durability test was a bit of a joke. In the middle of summer a driver can probably set cruise control and never touch the brakes for a solid 5 hours(lack of traffic, strait roads, etc).
Those Vega's always looked like a mini Camaro. Sad Vega, Cobalt, Monza, Chevette, Cavalier & Corvair no longer made. Sounds like bad planning/engineering. Workers always got blamed. Another words, bad management. 🤔🇺🇸
Not to mention blowing head gaskets and warping the aluminum blocks because the radiators were too small and they had no coolant overflow recovery systems, just to save Chevy a few dollars per car in production costs.
That would be correct by modern standards, but in 1975 our expectations of quality were very, very low. If you had a car that made it to 100k without major work, that was something special.
@@JHruby Exactly. In those days 75k was an old, worn-out car- reaching 100k was considered remarkable. Odometers were mechanical, and most cars' odometers only recorded up to 99,999.9 miles before rolling over to zero again- except Volvo, who prided themselves on adding an extra digit, the implication being that their cars would last long enough to use it.
60,000 miles on three Chevy Vegas would have consumed approximately 53 quarts of oil and, even at 8L/100km, over 23,575 liters of petrol in 58 days. That's more than one cubic ton of carbon dioxide output per day from these three cars.
Carbon Dioxide is a harmless gas. You've been duped into thinking that it is a dangerous "Greenhouse Gas" that contributes to Global Warming. Water Vapor is far more of a heat retainer and it is more abundant than CO2 in the atmosphere.
Durability run? I test drove a new Vega back in the day. It was making a sound like marbles in a can when the salesman started it. The same Lordstown assembly line that gave you the Chevy Cruze.
It looks like pre-1976 Dura-Built 140 engines had overheating issues. This video showcased the issues should be resolved for 1976. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_2300_engine
The other way to look at what they think is an impressive feat: 1 in 3 Vegas will have to have a timing belt before 60,000 miles. Not so impressive then is it?
I owned a '72 Vega Wagon. I loved the handling and design BUT the engine was a piece of junk. These Death Valley Tests were a bunch of trash phony tests.
Japanese manufacturers: "We target continuous improvement and we know what we do well and stick to it". GM and the Big Three: "We make our customers that bought our product the durability testers. Let us know how it goes so you can trade it in, buy the next heap we make and repeat the process...."
I like the scenery, but this kind of durability is pretty much baseline these days. Your average new car could run for years in these conditions now with very limited maintenance.
How many gallons of oil used. 100! Joking of course. GM was trying to show they actually gave a shit. They screwed the buyers of this car badly. Even with all the warranty work. GM millions on this car. At the expense of losing customers. Not good. Welcome to the world of GM of the 1970s. And to add. Not one engineer who designed these cars would even sign off on the design! 2 years from starting designs on paper to being manufactured. Incredible!
The gallons of oil with that fleet of cars was not a stretch. The '74 Vega GT I had was burning a quart of oil every 200 miles by the Spring of 1979. My brother being a savvy automotive mechanic for a Chevy dealership, installed high-heat range spark plugs and advanced the engine's timing to minimize spark plug fouling. That setup required using high-octane gasoline to prevent engine pinging.
Not a real test - total distance by foru cars is not the same as this same distance by one car. Also - highway driving at steady pace is not very stressful for those cars.
I see Chevy took no chances. All three Vegas drove together. If these were lone drivers, and the timing belt broke in the middle of the desert, not only would it damage the engine, the poor driver would be left on his own in 120 degree heat with no other driver to pick him up. He would either perish from the heat or be eaten alive by rattlesnakes. One thing we didn't hear about was how much oil were these rustmobiles Vegas were burning.
Rather a pointless test as there was no heat cycling. If they did it today it would have had large chillers used every time the engines were turned off with additional oil coolers used only at stop time.
Didn’t the Monza & Vega share the same chassis? Why was the Monza far more popular? Did they share the same engines, or did Monza have its own line of engines?
I had a low-mileage '77 with the Holley two-barrel carb and CB250 auto trans. Utter garbage. GM/Chevy screwed themselves by selling the Vega to young people just beginning to buy cars.
@@mikedx2706 yea that’s why I’m sticking with the decent era of BMW. My 2001 X5 has 150k and is running better than ever. But BMW is not who they used to be, coming from someone who is a fan.
Owned a74 gt....loved it.....they probably used death valley because it was the only place dry enough to keep the front fenders from rusting off the car during the test!!!!😂
I had a '74 GT hatchback. Bought it used in 1978 from my brother that had previously planned to put a Chevy V8 engine in it.
The steering and handling was marvelous. The ride was firm but comfortable. The interior well laid-out. No issues with the bucket seats. Radio AM/FM worked well.
But the body corrosion; the engine excessively burning oil; and the clutch going bad at 66K miles, the car was junk by 1980.
@@bloqk16 You were one of the lucky few. My sister bought a 74 in 76 and it didn’t even last more than a year after she got it. Don’t think these were ever meant to last beyond the 1970’s! Sad because I thought they were pretty decent/looking(esp. the GT) compared to some of the choices available for the day.
There was NO rusting proofing on this car.
That was the big thing the Detroit auto makers did back in the 1950s through the '70s: The long-distance durability run.
The major flaw was that those vehicles were operated at constant highway speeds; which is a gentler mode than the realities of: Continuous strings of stops-and-starts; excessive idling; hard-acceleration; and high-revving the engines.
Put those cars through the paces of city traffic, such as in San Francisco or New York City, and lets see what the durability results would be after 100K miles.
By 1976, the engine was much improved but the buying public was not convinced. It's insane that it took them all of those years to correct problems that never should have been there in the first place.
Second rate engineering which reared its ugly head on more than just the Vega!
My old man was a foreman at lordstown. Man he had some stories to tell. RIP Dad. We miss you
Awesome, union man I assume. I am sure he oversaw a lot of Detroit iron. May he RIP.
He ever met GM former President Pete Estes?
I once had a Vega, sold to me for $1.00, when I was young and broke. The fuel filter clogged regularly, because the gas tank was full of crap, and it burned oil like crazy. I didn’t have it for long lol. After I spewed oil fumes and smoke plumes, for miles, all over the car behind me, the driver screamed “GET THAT PIECE OF ISH OFF THE ROAD!!!”. I then drove it home and never again touched it. 😂
Well, one aspect that looked legit with this film: The accumulation of crud on the sides of the Vegas.
My comment is in light of an earlier promotional film of the Chevy Corvairs, driving into Central and South America, that always showed those vehicles looking remarkably clean being driven on dirt roads.
Im no GMC fan especially what I consider newer - mid 80s, but Ive had a 67 C20 that was awesome, a 65 Corvair and I liked both those products. I kinda always liked the Vega I wish the cars would go back to this simplicity Ive been wrenching on cars and motorcycles since like 1970 im 62 and still wrenching on old junk. thanks Periscope films for sharing these treasures!
The bad thing is, by that point, the engineers had figured out most of the problems, but the public reputation was still shot.
And rightly so. You should never use your customers who pay for the car with hard earned money as extended factory testers.
Good thing they had that good old GM Frigidaire R-12 air conditioning!
that made it a 3 cylinder.
1972 graduated from high school, bought a new Vega. Engine burn up, twice. G M repl
aced both engines. My brother bought a 1971 Vega, he put a Cosworth head on his Vega engine, raced it, did well. His engine never burned up.😮
My parents Vega couldn’t even withstand the suburbs of Long Island, New York. It’s amazing how shitty the cars were back then, and how reliable they are now.
It was motor trend car of the year 3 years in a row, what's the big deal🤦🏻♂️
@@jaymes1 - I smell unscrupulous payments there!
I had one of these cars back at that time. It burned oil and leaked oil. It had an aluminum engine. I changed the spark plugs and in the process, scratched the burnt oil off a small area on the engine block. I could see what the block was made of: A label pressed into the engine block read: "Budweiser".
"Renylds Wrap" 😂 just be glad it wasn't "Mattel".
Mine said "Coors." 😄
Heck to bad it didn't say "Bud Light" you'd have something of value. And yes I know that brand wasn't around then. I'm just playing.... 😂
Chevy had figured out the cylinder wear problem by '76. This ad was probably an attempt to restore confidence.
The three bravest people ever to walk the Earth.
Yes, and I thought the Apollo astronauts were brave.
My uncle had one of those. He called it the biggest hunk of junk he'd ever spent money on.
@GeorgAndexlerAndexler the pinto was a fire bomb, it kept going..the vega would die at 100k.
I left Arizona in my Chevy Vega estate 2 door station wagon with 31k on the odometer and made it to Northern Illinois before the motor siezed up on it.
BIG P.O.S. 💩
Narrated by Alexander Scourby, otherwise known as "The Voice of The King James Version" when I was growing up. ☺
Best comedy I've ever seen. GM clowns never get tired.
Bashing car brands is so 2000's
So sayeth every failing\failed auto mechanic!
@@TheDutchShepherd Chevy has sucked since 1974, so it’s really a tradition at this point.
I wish I had a nickel for every motor I replaced when I worked as a mechanic in a Chevy dealer back then I would be richer than Croesus.
I hope you had more than a nickel for replacing engines.
"These pretzels are making me thirsty!"
Thats not acting. Here : "These pretzels, are Making Me thirsty!"
Interesting bonus footage at the end after the Chevrolet film ended.
Yes the engine held up, but the damn frame still rusted out and failed 😅
They forgot to mention that the Vegas were rusting off the frames in the dealership parking lots.
Pretty impressive. August and September Death Valley temperatures are hotter than most experience anywhere else in North America. Lots of road trips to Death Valley and it's not uncommon to see an overheated car at some point. As others have pointed out though, heat aside the durability test was a bit of a joke. In the middle of summer a driver can probably set cruise control and never touch the brakes for a solid 5 hours(lack of traffic, strait roads, etc).
Those Vega's always looked like a mini Camaro. Sad Vega, Cobalt, Monza, Chevette, Cavalier & Corvair no longer made. Sounds like bad planning/engineering. Workers always got blamed. Another words, bad management. 🤔🇺🇸
Bullshit, It was a quality built car way before this test. Chevrolet always replaces nameplates with new models.
Another way to analyze that data, one out of three 1976 Chevy Vegas will have a timing belt failure At only 68,000 miles. - that’s not too good.
Not to mention blowing head gaskets and warping the aluminum blocks because the radiators were too small and they had no coolant overflow recovery systems, just to save Chevy a few dollars per car in production costs.
That would be correct by modern standards, but in 1975 our expectations of quality were very, very low. If you had a car that made it to 100k without major work, that was something special.
My 1974 Civic had the timing belt fail before 60,000 miles.
@@JHruby Exactly. In those days 75k was an old, worn-out car- reaching 100k was considered remarkable. Odometers were mechanical, and most cars' odometers only recorded up to 99,999.9 miles before rolling over to zero again- except Volvo, who prided themselves on adding an extra digit, the implication being that their cars would last long enough to use it.
They planned to stay for 3 whole months… but the bodies RUSTED TO 💩
Those tests used to be popular, but they don’t compare to reality. The numerous cold starts and different drivers kills cars.
Aluminum engines with chrome on the cylinders that once worn through had the steel rings dig into the aluminum as I recall?
They missed the chance for a red, white, and blue '76 Vega...
No they didn't. In 1974, the Vega, Nova and Impala were available with the "Spirit of America" package for the anticipation of the Bicentennial.
60,000 miles on three Chevy Vegas would have consumed approximately 53 quarts of oil and, even at 8L/100km, over 23,575 liters of petrol in 58 days. That's more than one cubic ton of carbon dioxide output per day from these three cars.
Carbon Dioxide is a harmless gas. You've been duped into thinking that it is a dangerous "Greenhouse Gas" that contributes to Global Warming.
Water Vapor is far more of a heat retainer and it is more abundant than CO2 in the atmosphere.
What a great production..so cool tasty classy STUFF 🌟👑🌟
Durability run? I test drove a new Vega back in the day. It was making a sound like marbles in a can when the salesman started it. The same Lordstown assembly line that gave you the Chevy Cruze.
Nice try GM, but the Vega engines blew up at around 50,000 miles.
Lordstown couldn't build these cars fast enough the first 3 years! That's how many they sold!
One out of three '76 Vegas needed a timing belt before 60,000 miles. That's not particularly impressive.
Your right.......which is why I swapped a 327 with 202 feeley heads.......that car was a rocketship
So did my 1974 Civic. Timing belt broke when I was on the freeway. Thankfully, not an interference engine.
Were the Vegas interference engines?
probably not that hard to change i would have done it at 40000
Rubber timing belts aren’t generally safely good for much more than 60,000 miles. That’s why todays engines have turned back to steel timing chains.
It wasn't the heat that killed the engine, it was the cold.
Every picture that they show of the Vegas show the windows open. Guess they couldn't run that air conditioning for fear of an overheat.
Too bad it took until 1976 to sort out all the Vega problems
The instant rust out was never solved.
It looks like pre-1976 Dura-Built 140 engines had overheating issues. This video showcased the issues should be resolved for 1976. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_2300_engine
The other way to look at what they think is an impressive feat: 1 in 3 Vegas will have to have a timing belt before 60,000 miles. Not so impressive then is it?
1976 defensive about cooling system,, attractive car,,,I would still buy one,,,maybe today's synthetic oil might have saved it
maybe iron cylinder liners a larger radiator and a multi-layer shim head gasket would help.
Bet they weren't standard. Expensive special coolant for a start, and oil.
I owned a '72 Vega Wagon. I loved the handling and design BUT the engine was a piece of junk. These Death Valley Tests were a bunch of trash phony tests.
Well done
Japanese manufacturers: "We target continuous improvement and we know what we do well and stick to it".
GM and the Big Three: "We make our customers that bought our product the durability testers. Let us know how it goes so you can trade it in, buy the next heap we make and repeat the process...."
They must have been cosworth engine's because the aluminum block cast iron engine's were junk.
These were the Iron Duke engines
@@edwardpate6128 Iron Duke engines didn't come out until 1977.
I like the scenery, but this kind of durability is pretty much baseline these days. Your average new car could run for years in these conditions now with very limited maintenance.
How many gallons of oil used. 100! Joking of course. GM was trying to show they actually gave a shit. They screwed the buyers of this car badly. Even with all the warranty work. GM millions on this car. At the expense of losing customers. Not good. Welcome to the world of GM of the 1970s. And to add. Not one engineer who designed these cars would even sign off on the design! 2 years from starting designs on paper to being manufactured. Incredible!
The gallons of oil with that fleet of cars was not a stretch. The '74 Vega GT I had was burning a quart of oil every 200 miles by the Spring of 1979.
My brother being a savvy automotive mechanic for a Chevy dealership, installed high-heat range spark plugs and advanced the engine's timing to minimize spark plug fouling. That setup required using high-octane gasoline to prevent engine pinging.
Excellent
Sooo.... you're only 67% likely to buy one that uses coolant or chucks it's timing belt within 50k miles.
Not a real test - total distance by foru cars is not the same as this same distance by one car. Also - highway driving at steady pace is not very stressful for those cars.
They should have done that in 1969 when they were still pre-production.
good work
I see Chevy took no chances. All three Vegas drove together. If these were lone drivers, and the timing belt broke in the middle of the desert, not only would it damage the engine, the poor driver would be left on his own in 120 degree heat with no other driver to pick him up. He would either perish from the heat or be eaten alive by rattlesnakes. One thing we didn't hear about was how much oil were these rustmobiles Vegas were burning.
a timing belt at 60000 miles is not good
they didn't show the 3 cases of oil in the trunk of each vega.
Rather a pointless test as there was no heat cycling. If they did it today it would have had large chillers used every time the engines were turned off with additional oil coolers used only at stop time.
My recollection is of chronic engine problems with at least one Vega engine. Was it the Cosworth version or the regular engine.
The regular engine failed quickly. They put out this film, I am sure, because of that to show the Vega is dependable and doesn't burn oil anymore.
I believe these were the Iron Duke 4 cylinder engines.
Iron Duke engine had no timing belt
@@johnchildress6717 the iron duke could run for 250k with normal maintaince..
Ahh … the rubber timing belt. Probably the greatest crime perpetrated against the American car buyer. 😂
Nobody's talking about the radiation the cars and drivers endured driving through that portion of the country at that time. 😄
they're all dead now, the cars were first.
Too little too late.
Didn’t the Monza & Vega share the same chassis? Why was the Monza far more popular? Did they share the same engines, or did Monza have its own line of engines?
I had a 78 Vega, POS.
Too little too late! Vega was one of the worst cars in GM history and that says a lot.
Think they bought it?
👍
Built like tanks ! LOL
Yeah, tanks that were decimated by the German Wehrmacht in WWII.
Vega 👍Monza 👎🖕
I had a low-mileage '77 with the Holley two-barrel carb and CB250 auto trans. Utter garbage. GM/Chevy screwed themselves by selling the Vega to young people just beginning to buy cars.
transmissions without oil coolers............
BMW boi checking in. They don’t make cars like these anymore
BMW now makes cars that self destruct around 60,000 to 70,000 miles.
Thank goodness!
@@mikedx2706 yea that’s why I’m sticking with the decent era of BMW. My 2001 X5 has 150k and is running better than ever. But BMW is not who they used to be, coming from someone who is a fan.